1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a panel for a flat panel display device and, more particularly, to a pane for a flat panel display device having terminals for a flat-panel display device.
2. Description of Related Art
A panel for a flat panel display device (e.g. a liquid crystal display panel) generally has an active region 110 (or a display region), a terminal lead wire region 120, and a terminal region 130 (as shown in FIG. 1). The active region (or a display region) 110 comprises pixels, functional switch elements (e.g. thin film transistors), and signal wires crossed over one another (including source/drain signal wires and gate signal wires) for displaying images. The terminal lead wire region 120 surrounds the active region (or a display region) 110 for connecting the signal wires (including source/drain signal wires and gate signal wires) of the active region (or a display region) 110. Furthermore, the terminal region 130 also surrounds the terminal lead wire region 120. The terminal region 130 comprises a plurality of terminals 132 corresponding to the signal wires of the active region 110 for signal input to drive the active region (or a display region) 110 to display images. The terminals 132 of the terminal region 130 are connected to IC chips for controlling the displaying performance of the active region (or a display region) 110. In a conventional panel, the terminals include gate terminals aid source terminals. Each terminal has a guard and a buffer on the outer side close to the end or the edge. A gate terminal, as shown in FIG. 2B, is a gate signal lead wire 210 connecting terminal formed on the panel substrate with the gate or the gate signal wire. The method for manufacturing terminals is similar to that for manufacturing gates or gate signal wires. The materials (for example chromium or alloys containing chromium) and the thickness (or the height) of the layer of the terminal lead wire of a gate terminal are similar to that of the gate or gate signal wire. Because the terminal conductor wire 220 and insulating layer 230 of each gate terminal are simultaneously formed on the surface of the flat panel display device with the respective gate lead wire of the active region (or display region), it has good adherence with the glass substrate. Therefore, the gate terminal lead wires 220 are smoothly disposed in the surface of the glass substrate after the border edge of the face panel has been well ground (to remove the outer side of the terminals).
However, the situation for the source terminals is another story different from that of the gate terminals. As shown in FIG. 2A, source terminal lead wires 280 and source terminal conductor wires 260 are simultaneously made with source signal wires. Therefore, source terminal lead wires 260 and source signal wires have the same structure, each comprising a source terminal conductor wire layer 260, a source terminal lead wire 280, a protection layer 290 sandwiched between the source terminal conductor wire 260 and the source terminal lead wire 280, and an insulating layer 270 (for example, silicon nitride) sandwiched between the terminal conductor wire 260 (or source terminal lead wire 280) and the glass substrate 250.
During the fabrication process, a grinding (or polishing) procedure is performed to grind away buffer regions and guards from the terminal region after formation of the circuitry in the active region (or display region) and terminal region of the substrate. According to structure of conventional panels, due to the weak adherence between the insulating layer (for example, silicon nitride) and the glass substrate, the grinding of the source terminal wire layer may cause a serious releasing of the insulating layer from the glass substrate and further results a contact error or short circuit of the connected IC chips or terminal circuitry when connecting IC chips to the terminal circuitry. These drawbacks result in low yield of the fabrication of flat panel display device.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a flat panel display device to eliminate the aforesaid drawbacks.